Scott Freeman

From Zephaniah 3:17

A friend of mine sent this to me.  I don’t know if he wants attribution or not.  This is just too funny.
SurpriseVisitorattheWhiteHouseEasterEvent.wmv

My lengthening series on How I Got Here will return soon.

Great editorial in the New York Times about gas price solutions

Or, Bombshells

In making the transition from youth ministry to the pulpit, I threw myself into honing the “craft” of preaching.

I submerged myself into learning how to be a better preacher, how to engage the text, and repeat the process on a weekly basis.

I focused on learning how to counsel and minister to adults. I finished my Master’s Degree, as well.

As a result, I missed a lot of what was going on around me. I stayed up on politics but missed out on all the conversations that were “emerging” at the time. It wouldn’t be until I felt more comfortable as a church pastor that I would engage those conversations. But, that’s another story.

During the ramp-up to Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL), I was an ardent supporter of military conflict. I longed for us to go into Iraq.

Killing a few Muslims, I thought, was a good thing. I even taught a class at church that perverted Just War Theory enough to justify our invasion into Iraq.

I didn’t really care if there were WMD’s there or not. I just hated Muslims. For me, that was reason enough to go. Toby Keith was my favorite theologian at the time.

My hatred was not Christ-like nor was it holy. But, as I talked about a few weeks ago, I had become good at re-writing the words of Jesus to fit my tastes.

In early 2004, I was standing in my local library (I would go broke feeding my book jones, otherwise). One of the small joys in life is discovering a book that you know nothing about.

On the shelf, was a work titled Mere Discipleship: Radical Christianity in a Rebellious World. Two of my all-time favorite books are Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I was struck by the melding of these two titles, so I picked up the book. I immediately noticed that the author, Lee Camp, was a professor at Lipscomb University, a Church of Christ School.

Taking that book home and beginning to read it was a bomb-shell for me. It was a call to righteousness and discipleship that I was not prepared for. I had heard of John Howard Yoder, who greatly influenced Camp, but had not read any of his work.

I would like to say that I quickly grasped everything, but I didn’t. I was still too hate-filled for the idea of truly following Jesus.

I loved war too much to contemplate peace.

I invoked my rule and gave up after 50 pages.

But Camp’s words would not let me go. For, I knew, that they contained truth, that the kingdom I was a part of was not an earthly one made with human hands. My allegiance was in Christ, not a nation. I had even preached against the dangers of nationalism.

I went back to Camp’s book again. And again. And again. It is one of the foundational works in my life. It has served to lead me to the writings of Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, and others.

More importantly it drove me back to the gospels, to examine the Nazarene anew, to see with fresh eyes the radical words of a Jewish firebrand.

It was this work that began to propel me toward re-examining my faith. I began to ask some hard questions and found that the answers shamed me.

I was a Christian, but I was not like Christ.

Next: Becoming 3/4 of the man I once was

(For an excerpt from Camp’s book, click more) continue reading…

Or, Insurance

Health insurance had never been a problem for me personally.  I had been covered throughout my adult life either through self-employment or by the church I worked for.

Now, granted, I did not have any grandiose notions about the benevolence or the ethics of health insurance companies.  For three years BCBS tried to stick us with the bill for Chloe’s birth, despite the fact that Tracy had been covered throughout her pregnancy and delivery. It took years of attorneys, threats of litigation, and stress to get them to pay what they rightfully owed.
When I moved to Michigan and began pastoring a congregation of less than 100 people, the luxury of provided insurance was no longer viable.  I now had to secure coverage for me and my family.

Tracy and Chloe were no problem.  I got them insured soon after we arrived in Port Huron, although at astronomical rates.

Yet, no one would cover me.  I was 34 years old and without insurance. With one child and another one soon to be on the way there was no safety net if something happened to me. I was deemed too much of a medical uncertainty for ANY insurance company to take a risk on me.

Sure, I was overweight with elevated cholesterol.  I was on synthroid for hypothyroidism.  During the final days of my disastrous youth ministry in Texas, I had taken some anti-depressants.  But come on, Zoloft is like candy in our prescription happy society.

But, I was healthy.  I had no serious problems.  I had never been sick a day in my life.  There was no alarming family history of medical problems.

Yet, no one would cover me. 

And in the state of Michigan, no one had to.  That’s capitalism, friends.  Competition is good, right?

3 miles away, across Lake Huron, however, my Canadian neighbors had insurance. They had quality coverage, cheap prescription benefits and access to expert care.  Everyone was covered.
Yet, on the streets of America, I was one of 44 million uninsured people.  The richest, most powerful country in the world offered little to no protection to its citizens in the event of a medical catastrophe.

The game was driven by HMOs caring more for profit and competition than for patients and care. These organizations proscribe choice and hamstring doctors from providing complete and total treatment.

Fortunately, I found one doctor who made it easier for me to navigate this period.  She continually waived large portions of the office visit fee and kept me stocked with samples so that I did not have prescription costs, which would have been sizeable without coverage.  To me, she was the epitome of what American health care should be.

Eventually the prospect of what could happen forced my wife to return to work.  She works, to this day, for the sole purpose of providing health insurance.  Her paycheck usually amounts to less than we pay for child-care.  (But that’s another issue, entirely.)
My experience was a wake-up call to see the health care crisis that we face in this country. My first-hand encounter with the heartless pursuit of capitalistic competition was enough to give me pause.

We can spend billions of dollars a minute on a war, we can send rebates and “economic stimulus” checks but we can’t provide better coverage for hard-working Americans?

I became a proponent of health-care reform.

Next-OIL and Lee Camp

For further reading, I suggest Critical Condition : How Health Care in America Became Big Business–and Bad Medicine.

Or, Transistions

When Chloe was born, I knew this: I didn’t want to be away from her any more than absolutely necessary.

I also knew that I would lay down my life for her.  She exposed me to a depth of love that I had never known before.

She was my child.  She would teach me much about love in the coming years.
I had known for some time that my days in youth ministry were numbered.  My heart was in the pulpit.

I grew to hate the trips, lock-ins, retreats and rallies that are ubiquitous in youth ministry. I didn’t want to be away from home.
I loved Bible Studies and teaching.  It was in those settings that I felt competent and qualified. But, as I already mentioned, that wasn’t enough to be successful in YM.

In those final months, I was not a good youth minister.  I taught well, the content of my classes were solid, but my heart was not in it anymore.

I wanted to preach.  My gifts were not geared to YM any longer.  I was a preacher and a teacher and nothing but preaching and teaching could feel that void.

When I finally convinced Tracy that it was time to make the transition, the towers fell.

I’ll be brief here because talk of post-9/11 reactions has been done.

Suffice it to say, any progress toward love was hampered on that day.  I hated terrorists, I hated Muslims, I hated people who looked like they might be Muslims. I hated people who knew Muslims.
I hated anyone who questioned the goodness and holiness of the American people.
Yes, it was time for me to transition into a role where I regularly proclaimed the love and grace of Jesus.  It was time for me to share the Good News of God’s salvation to those who needed to hear that message of hope, redemption and reconciliation.

Sadly, the irony was lost on me.  I was still a ways away from seeing the hypocrisy in my life.

In the meantime, I could preach full-time to people who looked like me (white), believed like me (conservative Republican, yet open-minded Church of Christ) and acted like me.

I blanketed the country with my resume and found the perfect place: Port Huron, Michigan.

It was a small congregation with a huge capacity to love.  They welcomed us in with open arms and for the next 32 months, they allowed me to learn what it meant to be a preacher.  They gave me freedom to question, learn and to grow.

Because of that freedom, I was able to take the next important steps.

Next: The Failure of Capitalism

Or, Compassionate Conservatism

In retrospect, I would like to say that the thoughts and sentiments of Rich Mullins (see previous post) stuck with me, but they did not.

A “savior” emerged that offered the restoration of the greatness of America, the reclamation of all that made America good and right and pure, i.e. Reagan Redux.

George W. Bush campaigned on a platform of Compassionate Conservatism, the idea that you could hold conservative ideas yet still help those in need.

This idea of compassionate conservatism was a soothing balm for me. It enabled me to straddle the chasm between my growing understanding of the words of Jesus and the reality of American life. I could vacillate between both worlds with no compunction.
However, the idea looked far better on paper than it did in practice. Compassion and love in its truest form is not conservative but radical, it breaks free of the constraints of the status quo and seeks to effect change in the lives of the forgotten and the least of these.

By this time, however, I had arrived. I was youth minister for a 1000+ member, affluent church in a northern Dallas suburb. I was at the pinnacle of my profession.
We had built an enormous multi-million dollar building with the ideas that it would be the flagship church in our community. People would flock to us because of our gleaming edifice fronting the highway.

They would knock down our doors because they would see our cross dominating the skyline.

It did not matter that we had incurred enormous debt in order to do so. God had blessed us with the financial means and the population to make a huge splash. He had “expanded our territory.”
We were positioned to be “the” church in town.

(Note: my observations about my time at this location are just that, my observations of my own feelings.  Wonderful and godly people are members of that church who have done and continue to do great things for the glory of God.  Any indictment in my words are directed at me and not them.)

Life was great. Tracy was pregnant. We were making money hand over fist. Everything was as it should be.

But I was miserable.

There had to be something more.

Every week we had a staff meeting of all the ministers where we would discuss the ministry objectives of our church. Part of that process was long-range planning.

During one particular meeting, a small committee of “business-minded” men were asked to join us as we began to plot our future.

We were asked to envision where we saw the church 5 years down the road. As we went around the room, I was struck how all the answers dealt with the cosmetics of church–bigger auditorium, gymnasium, greater reputation and visibility, etc.

Is this what it was all about?  Was my ministry so easily reduced to the three B’s: Budgets, buildings, and baptisms?  Was I to be known for what I was doing to improve our appearance, or for what God was doing through me?

Around that same time I had a meeting with parents where I was taken to task for the number of spiritual activities that I was having.  I was told that there were too many Bible Studies and not enough “fun” events.

I left those meetings with the impression that spiritual growth was not the focus.  For our church, the focus was size and reputation.

For our teens, the focus was not producing spiritually mature young adults, but to keep them from participating in activities that their school friends were involved in.  It was less important for our teens to be holy than it was for them to not appear unholy.  (I realize that this paragraph is somewhat hyperbolic, but it was how I felt.)
In both instances, I felt that I was invested in an immature faith.  Being at the biggest church, with the highest youth budget, with the salary in the upper-echelon of the “brotherhood” were my signs of success.

I had become a cosmetic Christian.  I wasn’t holy as much as I was not unholy. I didn’t drink, cuss or watch too many R-rated movies. I was on the “right” of all the important moral issues of the day.
Yet, I didn’t care about the line that crossed through town marking the racial and economic divides between my ministerial world and the world where Jesus lived.

I needed to change. I was conservative, but I sure wasn’t compassionate.

Does any of this make sense?

Next: A baby, a terrorist attack, and a move to Michigan

Or, Seeds

I was a long way from leaving the party but I did become disillusioned at the time of the Clinton Impeachment.

Clinton was wrong, granted.

But the GOP was not much better.

I began to describe myself as a “Political Athiest.”  I no longer believed in the god of politics.

I could not support the Clinton presidency nor could I stomach the hatred that sprang forth from the Republicans (this has flip-flopped, to coin a phrase, during the Bush administration).

I was asked by one girl in my youth group to give her my views on Government.  My response was that governments were all set up to fail because they were based upon human reasoning and intellect.  They were secular institutions, including democracy, that were self-serving and temporal.

This feeling, which I held during that time, had been influenced by one of my favorite artists of the ’90, Rich Mullins.  I’m not a big fan of most Contemporary Christian Music.  Insipid lyrics, amateurish production values, and a sound that always seems dated leaves me somewhat underwhelmed.  But the words and music of Mullins always spoke to me.  I was devastated by his death and grieved the loss of this voice of compassion and truth.

During the impeachment process, I heard a retrospective of his work on the radio.  He had said something that stuck with me:

I think the big problem is that, as Christians, we forgot that our identity is wrapped up in Christ and for a long time we bought into the illusion that the will of the masses would be more generous and more benevolent than the will of one dictator. But democracy isn’t necessarily bad politics, its just bad math. A thousand corrupt minds are just as evil as one corrupt mind. 

I’m very hurt at the apathy in the church. I’m very hurt over the determination of the government to destroy life and its not simply over the abortion issue. Anyone who has any awareness at all of Wounded Knee, not only the first Wounded Knee but what happened there, what 20 years ago, whatever. You kinda go, there can be no doubt that governments that are controlled by men are without exception anti-life and anti-Christ.

I think for a long time I believed that there would be political solutions because, growing up in America, you endure several political campaigns and these people make promises and they say, we will do this and we will do that and you believe them because you don’t know any better. And I really believed for a long time that this was all going to work. And I thank God now for Richard Nixon and for Gerald Ford and for all those people who betrayed any confidence that the American people could have in their government who said that the leadership of this country is not accountable to the people who elect them and who made so clear what we now know that no government works. And I wanted the government to work. And what I have now realized is I used to make fun of the sentimental feeling of the church that there was an afterlife. I used to mock songs about Heaven. And I used to think that it was somehow stupid and even wicked to dream of Heaven and to long for Heaven. And now I see the kind of a horrible place earth really is. And I go hiking and I go, this could be so beautiful. I met the guy last night sweeping the stairs down there and I talked to this very gentle man, a very kind man, a very simple man and I thought, how could a world made up of people like this be such a horrible place. And then I pick up the paper and read about dishonesty and deceit and betrayal and all that and go, I do long for Heaven. Someday God will destroy injustice. Someday there will be a judgment and because we have a loving and a forgiving Father, maybe we’ll survive it. If we don’t, sometimes I think hell is better than what we deserve anyway.

I miss Rich Mullins, still.  I believe he was right.  I believed it then, but it was too radical for me to fully embrace.  Besides, 2000 was coming and a Republican “Savior” was emerging.

Coming: America Held Hostage

Read the story here

This has me concerned.  You don’t think that proctologist that came by our house last week was a fake, do you?

(How Did I Get Here to resume later, possibly today)

Or, How Bill Clinton Taught Me True Grace.

I remained a good little Republican boy throughout the 90′s. However, 8 years of the Clinton presidency somewhat muted my enthusiasm for politics.

Sure, I had that momentary feeling of euphoria when the GOP “cleaned house” during the 94 mid-terms. However, that was short-lived.

After all, Bill Clinton was still in office.

Where I come from, hatred of Bill Clinton runs deep. The animus between many conservative Christians, in my experience, is not due to political differences.

It is not disagreement with his positions or ideologies.

It is hatred, pure and simple. Bill Clinton was the poster boy for all that is “wrong with America.”

In 1996, I stumbled a little bit. I made some mistakes, committed some sins, and left ministry. I wandered for a while before I made my way back home.
To come home, I needed grace. I needed forgiveness.  Thankfully, I received that.
During that process of returning, I met my beautiful wife, Tracy. She, too, had the Republican pedigree: actively involved in the Arkansas GOP, a delegate to the 1996 Republican National Convention. We were kindred spirits in more ways than one.
We married in 1998 around the same time a name entered into the vernacular: Monica Lewinsky. I was shocked and outraged at these charges, as was the rest of the country.

Of course, Clinton initially denied the allegations of sexual affairs in the White House. But when the truth emerged, he confessed and repented.

Yet, for many, there was no way he could be sincere. “The only reason he is sorry is because he got caught” was a chorus I heard over and over.

I struggled greatly with the Christian community’s reaction to all of this. I, too, had needed grace and received it. Why would we withhold it from Clinton?

My frustration finally bubbled over one Sunday night when we had a guest speaker at our church. He was a prominent man in our community of Albuquerque. A portion of his sermon was a diatribe against Bill Clinton.

He said, “The Bill Clinton mess is the perfect opportunity to teach our children about sin and about God’s judment on those who persist in such wicked living.”

I was boiling. Where was the grace? Bill Clinton had repented. He had asked forgiveness and prayers. He had asked three Christian leaders to minister to him and hold him accountable. But that wasn’t enough for many of us.

It wasn’t repentance we demanded of Bill Clinton. For so many, the only way Bill Clinton could redeem himself would be to change his political affiliation.  It wasn’t Jesus that Bill Clinton needed to square himself with, it was Newt Gingrich.
That was the first time I felt like abandoning my political party.

When I got to our teen devo that night I said, “The Bill Clinton affair is the perfect opportunity to teach our children about God’s grace and mercy. It is the perfect opportunity to teach that we can find forgiveness no matter who we are, no matter where we have been.”

My years as a Clinton-basher ended that night.

He asked for forgiveness.

It was not my place to doubt his sincerity, question his motives, or withhold forgiveness.

It was my job to forgive.

And to love.  Even Bill Clinton.

Next: Political Atheism